Volunteering at the Grassroots Level...

A couple of weeks ago our PRP class had an opportunity to participate in a community clean-up AKA Volunteer With Me 2011. It was a community-building event aimed at uniting/bonding members of the school community, their families and friends, and other do-gooders through involving them in a volunteering activity.  It was a gray Saturday morning with some drizzling rain, but the urge to give back to my community made me crawl out of bed and successfully make it to the event. 

Organization and Registration

I don't have a lot of complaints regarding organization of the event, except that Lanier High School where registration took place is pretty far from where I live (Hyde Park), and after registration (writing my name down on a scrap of paper, getting snacks, bottled water, and a t-shirt), I had to go all the way back to Dobie. Lanier High School was crowded with volunteers, and it was hard to find the registration spot due to the absence of arrows. It turned out to be in the very back of the school, quite a long and confusing walk for those who are at the school for the first time. 

At Dobie and the Process

When I think about 'community clean-up', I imagine raking leaves or picking up garbage. However this time it was different.  We were literally digging in the dirt in front of Dobie - pulling grass roots out, digging up plant roots, etc. After a couple of hours my back and upper arms started to hurt, dirt got under my nails, and it was becoming rather hot - but surprisingly I really enjoyed it! 

Pluses:

- The organizers had enough tools for all the volunteers, and we could easily share, too. 

- Bottled water was available on-site

- The organizers offered a variety of tasks (well, I noticed at least 4 of them)

Minuses:

- There were too many volunteers doing one job. The flower beds were literally crawled with volunteers, so, in my opinion, task/volunteer ratio could be a bit more efficient

- Instructions could be a bit more clear and precise

So, Community Involvement...

As far as I remember, the original idea of our participation in the project was to interact with the local community members, particularly, with parents of the kids going to Dobie. Personally I did no see any parents or any other adults at the event whatsoever. So I would say the community engagement was very low and limited to high school or college volunteers. As for the "local support", we had a middle-school band perform a couple of songs, which was,, honestly, truly awesome. I was even more excited about the band play when I realized that one of the songs they were playing was a hit which was very popular last fall. I heard it in a club a couple of times, but didn't know who the singer was so couldn't find it anywhere.  Now when i heard it I just came up to one of the band members and asked them what they were playing. Yay! "All I Do Is Win" - added to my playlist.  

What I Got Out of the Event

- ideas for organizing such an event in the future

- cool bonding experience with my wonderful classmates

- I brushed up my digging in the soil skills

- I truly connected with the nature, which was amazing

- once again I realized that volunteering is a big thing in the USA

Ideas for Improvement

So as a participant of the event, I have a couple of ideas for improvement:

- Registration: put up signs so that it's easier to find the registration tables; make sure the registration tables are not that far from the parking lot

- At the site: a bigger variety of tasks and a more reasonable task/volunteer ration, so that volunteers don't have to dig in the soil on top of each other

- Engaging a wider community (maybe, radio announcements, newspaper ads, facebook invite, etc) to make sure more people come to the event